Arizona’s missing, headline-grabbing governor, Jan Brewer, is in Afghanistan. At least that’s the word Bloomberg News got out of an undisclosed person who is familiar with her schedule.

Perhaps the tipoff should have been when she visited a wounded soldier in a hospital outside of Washington, D.C. yesterday. Apparently, she’s on her way to visit the troops in Afghanistan. Since the terrorist attacks in 2001, more than 9,000 troops from the Arizona Army and Air National Guard have been ordered to active duty.

The timing is convenient. Brewer is under fire for a number of her positions, like denying drivers’ licenses to young immigrants who are covered under Obama’s deferred action plan, and refusing to engage the state legislature on setting up a health insurance exchange, leaving it up to the federal government instead. While visiting Arizona troops probably falls under the heading of “official business,” which is how her trip has been described, there’s other official business that the governor is neglecting–raising the question of, “what’s so urgent about getting to Afghanistan?” After all, our troops have been fighting in the Middle East for 12 years.

Democrats are annoyed that Brewer skipped out on the ceremony certifying Arizona’s delayed election results on Monday. Plus, although the Arizona Republic speculated that she might be among members of the National Governor’s Association meeting with the President Tuesday morning, she was not. The rather important meeting was to discuss how the “fiscal cliff” will impact states.

Since this is Jan Brewer we’re talking about, there is no doubt an element of self-aggrandizement to her plans. She has cleverly captured national headlines just by her mysterious absence. Still, all the secrecy may have a legitimate cause. Maybe Brewer saw this rumor on Facebook: Arizonans are willing to raise whatever amount of money it would take to guarantee that she stays put where she’s at.

Author: Deborah MontesanoDeborah Montesano is a proud to be a lifelong liberal, a writer and blogger for liberal causes, and a social activist. She keeps leaning further and further to the left, trying to tilt her insanely red state of Arizona in the same direction. Along those lines, her husband describes her as a congenitally optimistic person, whether the evidence warrants it or not. Please join her on Facebook, twitter, @thepoliticali_1, or her blog, http://thepoliticali.blogspot.com.